How
deep is the current divide between Europe and the United States in terms
of how to conduct international affairs? Alarming notes have been sounded
on both sides of the Pond to the effect that the rift risks breaking up
NATO and rendering the United Nations “irrelevant” (to use the
rhetoric of the Bush administration. Usually, the French are being singled
out for leading the rebellion against the US hegemony, even though an
overwhelming majority of European citizens have been voicing their
opposition to the current US policy on Iraq, even in “pro-American”
countries such as Britain and Italy.
As it is often the case in complex matters, one cannot
form a reasonable opinion just by listening to alternative ways of
spinning the same stories in the media (assuming that one bothers to check
directly what the French or British press say, since American media are
becoming more and more homogeneous thanks to their ownership by an
increasingly smaller number of multinationals). It was therefore
refreshing to see actual data from a large survey of American and European
attitudes conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR).
The picture emerging from the study is more complex and nuanced than what
we tend to hear trumpeted by talking heads and media pundits.
It comes down to the following: Europeans are inclined
to agree with Americans on more issues than either of them agrees with the
rest of the world (this is good news for people who are worried about the
collapse of the West). However, there are major areas of disagreement that
might make for a very interesting upcoming decade in geopolitics (and this
is the good news for those who are interested in a more open discussion of
international issues). Let’s take a look at some of the details.
First off, Americans and Europeans really like each
other, and this goes even for the French. On a scale of 0 to 100,
Americans rate European countries between 61 (Germany) and 76 (Great
Britain), which is much higher than they rate any other country except
Canada. Conversely, the Brits rate the US at 68, and the rest of Europe
doesn’t go any lower than the Dutch’s 59. Furthermore, Europeans and
Americans see the same threats in the world, with terrorism and Islamic
fundamentalism ranking the highest. And, both sides agree that war on Iraq
would be justified, if backed by the United Nations (complete opposition
to the war run at only 13% in the US and 26% in Europe at the time the
survey was conducted).
However, worldviews start to diverge when one digs a bit
deeper. Generally speaking, Americans find the world a much more
threatening place than Europeans do. Most importantly, the two also differ
on their analysis of why some threats are there to begin with. For
example, 55% of Europeans think that US foreign policies have directly
contributed to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 (and I would
add that a good case can be made that they are not far off the mark).
Americans and Europeans also sharply disagree on how to
fix the problems they face. Only 19% of Europeans would like to increase
their country’s military spending, as opposed to 44% of Americans (and
one need to notice that the US already allocates significantly more money
to the military than European countries do). On the other hand, Europeans
are much more willing to spend their resources on foreign aid, since a
large majority of them sees that as a much more effective key to long-term
planetary peace and prosperity. This divergence has major consequences for
the whole concept of “superpower”: Americans think that the key to
superpower status is a strong military, while many Europeans want a united
Europe to become a superpower in the sense of cultural and economic
interaction with the rest of the world, opposing more military spending by
either their own countries or the European Community as a whole.
If one broadens the horizon beyond the immediate
concerns of war and terrorism, other interesting similarities and
differences emerge: Americans are only slightly more supportive of
globalization than Europeans, and about half of both Americans and
Europeans think that global warming is a high-priority threat. However,
66% of Europeans are opposed to some degree to biotechnology, against only
45% of Americans. Perhaps the largest divergence of opinions manifests
itself on immigration: 66% of Americans consider it a threat of the
highest level, while only 38% of Europeans agree with that assessment (of
course, there are differences among European nations themselves, with
Italy being on the most worried about immigration).
What are we to make of all this? On the one hand,
declarations of an insurmountable divide between the US and Europe are
obviously blown out of proportion: we are not witnessing the big schism of
Western culture just yet. On the other hand, it would be foolish for
anybody (and especially for rather single-minded American politicians) to
underestimate the areas of divergence between the two major blocks of
world democracies. And please, stop telling the Europeans that they should
get in line because America saved them during World War II: gratitude is
an important value, but wishing to translate it into perennial and
unquestioning allegiance is a bit insulting. And one thing nobody needs is
to add any additional insult to the dialogue between the two major
democratic blocks of the world
